Cadaver study suggests fist fighting could have played a role in hand evolution

A newly published research suggests that our hands didn’t evolve only to improve our hand´s technical abillity, but also to figth between males that wanted to mate with females. That suggests that the human fist is not just an added evolutionary change due to natural selection, it also  gives advantge to figth between hominids.

The research was done by David Carrier and his researcher group from the university if Utah, and prove that the evolutional changes given in the hand made possible (by the anatomy of the hand and specially of the thumb) the clousure of the fist.

Along history, the male-male competition has been very important in great ape mating systems, A closed fist protects the hand bones from injury by reducing the tension in bones when strinking. The special anatomy and proportions of the thumb redirects the energy in a punch through the hand and the damage caused in the bones is lower. To prove that hypothesis, they used cadavers and to measure the bone deformation during striking by attaching tension indicators in the hand bones. 

As they reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology, they found that tension and pressure were much higher in strikes where the hand was in a  relaxed position where it was in a closed position, with the fist closed.

Those findings demonstrate that our hand proportions evolve apart from improving technical ability also to allow the use of hands as a weapon during fighting.

SOURCE:  http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/uou-dmp101615.php